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The face of a changing society

Rob Kall recently opined on OpEdNews that most people cannot be either heroes or cowards on the national scene because they don't know and don't care about what's happening in the country today.

Since they get scant real news from the corporate-owned media and are unaware of any danger, they do not have to decide whether they'll bravely stand up or cravenly hunker down. Kall calls them zombies, people who simply accept the circumscribed life the "the military industrial big agra, big pharma big medicine media complex" has forced on them.

Another Internet writer, Peter Van Buren, copied on Common Dreams website from TomDispatch.com, claims we're in a "post-constitution America" because the government has with impunity redefined words, ignored others and blatantly violated whole sentences in the document written to limit government's actions.

An editorial cartoon in the Headlight earlier this month probably unintentionally demonstrated what is happening. It was a caricature of Bradley Manning, who was just court-martialed for unauthorized release of secret information. In the cartoon a bullet-ridden "informer" is shown next to Manning, dead, the cartoon says, because of Manning. The cartoon is a lie.

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The government has had to admit the information Manning revealed resulted in no deaths, no harm to people, military projects or processes. What Manning revealed was "embarrassing." Much more than that, what he revealed was eye-opening truth for those who took the time to look. Most Americans did not see the actual videos and documents Manning released to the media. (Some of them are still available on the website DemocracyNow.org.) Instead, the information repeatedly fed the public was, and is false, like the cartoon in the Headlight.

Manning knowingly offered his life for his country by attempting to tell the people what our government is doing secretly and without our approval. He knew what was happening, and as a man of conscience, he knew that in a democracy everyone else should know, too. Manning broke military law in defense of the constitution he swore to protect, an unbelievably dangerous, courageous act in this strange "post-constitution" time.

No wonder people are zombie-like. They are deliberately kept in the dark, lied to and kept afraid not only of unspecified foreign attacks as the media constantly warns. In many cases Americans have become so afraid and unsure of what's happening they look beyond their immediate needs.

Yet there are still heroes, as Edward Snowden has joined Manning to prove. So long as there are individuals who are aware, who know right from wrong, there is hope even in this beleaguered period. The constitution is still theoretically the law of the land; all we need is for a whole lot of citizens to wake up from zombie-hood, follow the heroes and make that beautiful document work again.